The MamaMiso study of self-administered misoprostol to prevent bleeding after childbirth in rural Uganda: a community-based, placebo-controlled randomised trial

Weeks, Andrew ORCID: 0000-0002-1909-337X, Ditai, James ORCID: 0000-0003-2670-7875, Ononge, S, Faragher, B, Frye, LJ, Durocher, J, Mirembe, FM, Byamugisha, J, Winikoff, B and Alfirevic, Zarko ORCID: 0000-0001-9276-518X (2015) The MamaMiso study of self-administered misoprostol to prevent bleeding after childbirth in rural Uganda: a community-based, placebo-controlled randomised trial. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth, 15 (1). 219-.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: 600 mcg of oral misoprostol reduces the incidence of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH), but in previous research this medication has been administered by health workers. It is unclear whether it is also safe and effective when self-administered by women. METHODS: This placebo-controlled, double-blind randomised trial enrolled consenting women of at least 34 weeks gestation, recruited over a 2-month period in Mbale District, Eastern Uganda. Participants had their haemoglobin measured antenatally and were given either 600 mcg misoprostol or placebo to take home and use immediately after birth in the event of delivery at home. The primary clinical outcome was the incidence of fall in haemoglobin of over 20% in home births followed-up within 5 days. RESULTS: 748 women were randomised to either misoprostol (374) or placebo (374). Of those enrolled, 57% delivered at a health facility and 43% delivered at home. 82% of all medicine packs were retrieved at postnatal follow-up and 97% of women delivering at home reported self-administration of the medicine. Two women in the misoprostol group took the study medication antenatally without adverse effects. There was no significant difference between the study groups in the drop of maternal haemoglobin by >20% (misoprostol 9.4% vs placebo 7.5%, risk ratio 1.11, 95% confidence interval 0.717 to 1.719). There was significantly more fever and shivering in the misoprostol group, but women found the medication highly acceptable. CONCLUSIONS: This study has shown that antenatally distributed, self-administered misoprostol can be appropriately taken by study participants. The rarity of the primary outcome means that a very large sample size would be required to demonstrate clinical effectiveness. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered with the ISRCTN Register (ISRCTN70408620).

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	misoprostol, postpartum haemorrhage, home birth, breast abscess, misoprostol group
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	22 Jan 2016 17:28
Last Modified:	15 Dec 2022 11:47
DOI:	10.1186/s12884-015-0650-9
Publisher's Statement :	© 2015 Weeks et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2047826